Posts Tagged ‘
English longbowmen ’

The feudal Frenchmen, having never encountered the longbow before, were staggered by the vast numbers of casualties caused by an enemy who was still so far away as to be out of crossbow range. They stood and watched clouds of arrows rising into the sky and then plunging into their ranks hitting them in the thighs and shoulders at steep angles. The peasantry and militia turned and ran leaving the wounded to the mercy of the pikemen, and the nobility to face the blades of their English counterparts.